TAT-2016 Post 21 – Wednesday 2 March 2016

 My Blog posts will start to be more often now that we are about to start Leg 1.

A few days ago I posted pictures of our loading the trailer with our 4 bikes in anticipation of their transport to Charleston on 1 March. This was accomplished as planned by Woodrow yesterday. The pictures below show the trailer attached and leaving Woodrow’s garage in the middle of rain. I especially like the picture of Woodrow’s co-pilot, Rudy, looking out the passenger side door window as he passes me.

 

 

 

 

 

Woodrow timed his departure perfectly so he could stay in the middle of the narrow but fast moving rain front almost halfway to Charleston. The track below is from my SPOT GPS locator that we insisted he carry so we would know where are bikes were on the trip to Charleston. This is the same SPOT I will carry on my bike during the ride back to Arkansas starting 16 Mar. I will post the web link to this map in a following post for anyone wanting to track our progress. I’ve used a SPOT on all my long distance motorcycle rides and on numerous wilderness raft trips with excellent results. I usually have a lot of family and friends tracking our progress and I’ve been amazed of how many others also follow along. In addition, it is a safety net that provides fast access to help or rescue if things get serious. I have a friend that would have died during a solo hiking trip if he didn’t have a SPOT with him after he slipped off a ledge and fell breaking several bones. Rescue found him only because they tracked him via the SPOT position.

 

The picture below is our bikes in Woodrow’s parent’s garage awaiting our arrival to being the ride West. He arrived in Charleston around midnight but Woodrow and his dad unloaded anyway just to ensure they were safe and sound.

 

 

Finally, I wanted to pass on some information for anyone else planning to ride the TAT. When we started to discuss riding the TAT last August 2015, I knew absolutely nothing about the TAT. I made a wise decision to order a complete set of maps from the original TAT guru, Sam Correro. After weeks of pouring over the maps I quickly decided that I would input the route into my GPS since I’m a techno geek and love electronics. Only then did I hear there were TAT GPS files available from another source, GPSKevin. I downloaded the free GPSKevin files and felt life was good. When we decided to only do the East Coast to Arkansas as Leg 1 I focused on comparing the TAT paper maps to the GPSKevin routes. For the most part they were the same but there were variances. We had decided to use the GPSKevin tracks where they were identical but use the TAT paper maps where they didn’t match. The reason was I had read on several forums and blogs of TAT riders finding locked gates or “Do Not Trespass” signs on the route. We wanted to try and eliminate this possibility as much as possible and Sam does a pretty outstanding job keeping his routes updated and informing his customers of these types of issues.

As a result, I ordered the GPS tracks for TN, MS and AR from Sam two days ago so I would have accurate and verified paper maps and GPS tracks. To my surprise when I loaded the GPS tracks they had several sections that deviated significantly from the paper maps. This was especially true on the East side of TN where the GPS track actually dipped down into Georgia where the paper map ran straight across TN. This seemed odd that Sam would have paper maps and GPS tracks that didn’t match. A few days ago I sent an email to Sam asking him why this is and he responded within 24 hours that I was correct that the route had been updated to provide a better trip on the TAT and is sending me update paper maps to match the new route. He also said that the updated route also eliminates Nevada and instead goes into Idaho.

I bought my paper maps several months before the change in route so understand why they didn’t match but Sam resolved the issue and we will be using Sam’s route 100% on our ride. Here is his link and I highly recommend using his data.

http://www.transamtrail.com/the-trans-am-trail/

Please don’t get me wrong. There are multiple routes to ride the TAT and although we have elected to use the route and data from Sam, I’m sure you could do the ride using other data and routes so enjoy which way you decide to ride.

Based on the additional pre-TAT route from Charleston, SC to Andrews, NC where we pick up the TAT we have computed our mileage per day and planned stops. There are a lot of variables that could change our final plan such as road and weather conditions. Water levels at the multiple crossings. Availability of motels along our route; BTW this is more of an issue than you might think. Sam has taken extra effort to take us through some very isolated areas so we’re not real sure some of the small towns will even have a place to stay. This is still one of the areas we are researching so when we launch we will have a pretty complete list of towns within easy driving distance from the TAT with the telephone numbers of the motels. The chart shows we plan to ride from 140 to 175 miles each day except for day 1 which is all highway. It will be interesting to see how well our plan works out. The TAT starts where the red Flags are on the far right. The Dark Blue line is the TAT paper map route plus it matches the GPSKevin route pretty close. The new Sam GPS route is the Cyan line that dips down deep into Georgia.

 

 

 

We have our rental SUV reserved and the next phase will be driving to Charleston to hook up with our bikes and gear so we can launch on 16 Mar. BTW, Woodrow called a short time ago and said my bike is in the Honda shop getting new tires and an oil change so I’m anxious to get started.